Stuff you don't want to find in your WW

I pulled my watercooling system apart the other day so I can take it home to do some barb work, and I figured I'd take my blocks apart to see what they looked like. (I'm back to the horrible, noisy, and hot world of air cooling for the next month )
I'd always assumed that my 15C above ambient temps were due to bad WB mounting (too lazy to fix) and/or crappy rad. Something inside me told me that there might be something blocking my channels in my WW, and look what I found.



Here's a close up of the crud next to my index finger.



edit:
Btw, it took me forever to get that first pic. I hate camera's with only auto focus. Finally figured out how to do my own image hosting too

*YIKES* what the hell is that stuff???? It looks like somebody blew his nose on it or something... Well good thing you know what the problem is now.

There was some rubbery gunk, a piece of chrome from one of the barbs, and some silicon. I still don't know what that red piece is......

yeah, i've found hair and crap in my WW too. i have since then put a filter in my res to keep stuff out.

Did you see any improvements in temps?

won't know till I put it back together, which is gonna be like another month.

Is that a D-Tek or an original? Was it easy to take apart?

I have an original White Water, and it is very easy to take apart, provided you have the correct size key (I think it is 2 or 2.5mm). Just remove the four black studs, and the block literally falls apart.

It's a DTek, they're really simple to take apart. It's a 3/32 allen wrench key. Beware the Chrome Barbs, they flake. Can't wait to resize my pressure hose barbs and put them on.

That may be so... the originals had metric sized bolts. And after taking a look at the key, I think that they're 2.5 mm.

2.5mm allen keys for the original all-copper white water's, and 3/32" allen keys for the DTek ones.

I highly recommend Bondhus brand allen keys. Picked up my 2.5mm keys for $0.75c at the local hardware store. Been using them for a long time now and they fit very snugly and are made of high quality metal. Never had one ever slip. This is in stark comparison to the yum-cha brand allen-keys that you find in those cheapo handy-kits which will sooner slip and strip the moment you try to turn anything with them.

The original White Waters shipped with non-stainless bolts. If one has the opportunity, I recommend replacing them with stainless bolts (M4x12mm for the AMD blocks, M4x16mm for the Intel ones). This is something that I addressed with the Cascade blocks. The DTek White Water's ship with stainless bolts.

The clogging thing is something that I fore-warned of in the White Water manual, and I believe that the DTek manual talks about it as well. Due to the fine channels, all these higher-end blocks need a little more care than the older style wide-open maze designs. Clogging can occur if you put lint filled water into your system, or if you run an open-to-the-air reservoir where dust, hair, pet fur, and who knows what else can get in.

This is an issue for all finely channelled blocks and one that must be addressed. Just as one would not put dirty fuel into their car which clogs up the fuel lines and injectors, there is the need to be careful with the finer designs that are now becoming more commonplace.

I'm very careful about keeping my system clean, I've got a closed system and I used distilled water etc, so I'm not quite sure where the rubbery stuff came from. All my O-Rings on my blocks seem to be intact. I'm pretty sure the metal came from the chrome barbs, I can still rub them with my fingers and get metal flakes. I had a lot of leaking problems with them too, so I used generous amounts of silicon. Lacing the barbs with silicon seemed to fix my problem, but apparently some of it flaked off.

Hopefully switching to brass barbs will help, though I'll be sure to try and be even more careful.

I plan to make my own waterblock similiar to the WW, with 1.5mm channels, but I'm going to braze it together. If I get gunk in there do you think running water through it backwards would get it out?